


She'll Change the World

by JulyStorms



Series: Before Colors Broke into Shades [24]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 01:48:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2604101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JulyStorms/pseuds/JulyStorms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Right across from him sat a woman, probably early 20s. She looked relatively normal—normal for a college student on a Saturday morning, anyway. [Prompt: #15: meeting in the E.R./A&E AU]</p>
            </blockquote>





	She'll Change the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goldkirk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldkirk/gifts).



> Prompt: #15: meeting in the E.R./A&E AU, Levihan. Requested by [PetrichorPoetry](http://petrichorpoetry.tumblr.com).

Levi was not there for himself. He was sitting in the too-bright waiting room of the Flanders Memorial Hospital Emergency Room because his genius friend Farlan had given his non-genius friend Isabel a really stupid idea, and Isabel had cracked her head a good one.

Levi was the only one of them with a car.

Sure, it was a piece of shit, but it had gotten Isabel to the E.R. in one piece.

He had no intention of sitting in the room with her to listen to her argue into infinity with Farlan about literally every single thing that had gone wrong—which was everything, in his opinion.

Instead he sat in the waiting room and flipped through a three month old magazine about motorcycles. He pretended that someday he might have the kind of money that would buy him one, decided he’d rather have a nice car anyway, and looked around for some form of entertainment.

Which he found immediately.

Right across from him sat a woman, probably early 20s. She looked relatively normal—normal for a college student on a Saturday morning, anyway. She had on pajama bottoms; the happy cloud pattern on them made him want to look away. She had a too-big t-shirt, and she was staring intently at a book. The spine, when he tilted his head to the left so that he could read it, said “PHYSICS”—a word that made him grimace with distaste.

Who even gave a shit about that kinda stuff, anyway?

Apparently this woman did, because she didn’t look up from the book. She just kept turning the page. Her brown hair was messy and pulled back and she probably hadn’t showered in at least a full day. All normal.

What was not normal was the full-sized bathroom towel wrapped around her right arm. The blood that seeped through it wasn’t normal, either.

She caught him staring when she sat up straighter to stretch her back. “You like physics?” she asked.

“Hell no,” he said. _Do I look like I’d last even five seconds in a college classroom_? he wanted to ask her.

She laughed, fumbled inside her purse, and pulled out a pair of glasses, which she put on. Then she sized him up—not like he was a piece of meat (women never did that to him, anyway), but like he was a human-sized Rubix Cube whose stickers were peeling.

He didn’t like it.

“It’s not so bad,” she offered. “It’s kind of interesting. Every engineer has to take a physics class or two. Or ten.”

He grimaced again. It sounded like hell. But he was intrigued even though he knew he shouldn’t be. Women engineers weren’t something to be gawked at…but he was going to gawk anyway. Farlan was the smartest person he’d ever met—and even Farlan wasn’t in college.

Yet. Maybe he’d get there. Maybe Levi’d help him get there. It was a thought he had never had before.

“You’re an engineer?” he asked.

“Engineering student,” she corrected. “I love it—it’s great! There are so many focuses that I just can’t decide on one, y’know?”

“No,” he said.

She laughed again like it was hilarious. Maybe it was. Maybe she was delusional from blood loss and reading about trains running into one another—or whatever it was people read about in physics textbooks.

“Well,” she continued, like he’d asked her a question, “there’s mechanical engineering, computer engineering, electrical engineering, bio _medical_ engineering—and on and on! All of them are so cool! All of them can change the world!”

He just stared.

Normally this was when he’d say he had to go take a smoke break (he didn’t smoke—it was disgusting, but it was a great excuse), or better yet: take a shit. Nobody would follow him to the bathroom.

But for some stupid reason he kind of liked this woman’s enthusiasm. Maybe she was a little delusional from blood loss or whatever it was that had landed her in the waiting room of the E.R., but the light in her eyes was genuine. She was passionate about engineering—something that Levi had always assumed was boring as all getout.

The only thing worse was accounting.

“I’m going to change the world,” she said.

“What?” was all he could think to say.

“Hey,” she grinned. “You didn’t tell me I couldn’t. That’s a first. Usually when I say that I’m going to change the world, people say that I can’t do it.”

“Who cares about what other people say?” he asked.

“ _Exactly_!” She pointed at him. “See? If people only listened to other people, we’d never see progress, but look at us go, right? We’ve got refrigerators and microwaves and cell phones and laptops and touch screens and Internet and jet planes and who knows what’s next!”

“You are way too awake for nine in the morning,” he told her.

She grinned. “I haven’t slept.”

For some reason, Levi wasn’t surprised.

He considered continuing the conversation; he turned over a potential question or two in his head, but before he could settle on anything that other people might consider normal, a figure approached the woman across from him.

He had expected a nurse to call her in, but it was a young man who shuffled up to her looking tired. “It’ll be fine,” he said to the woman.

“Moblit!” She practically leapt to her feet, fumbling with her towel to keep it on.

“I still think you should have that looked at.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine—just a scratch, really. It’s almost done bleeding.”

“You probably need stitches.”

“Nah.” She touched the Moblit guy’s arm and looked down at his torn pants. “What’d they say about it?”

“They removed the glass, said not to do any more crazy experiments in my lab partner’s kitchen. They said not to trust my lab partner.”

“What? I’m a great lab partner! I’m going to get us an A in that class, you know!”

“And I’ll lose a leg in the process,” Moblit said, but smiled.

Levi wondered what kinda stupid ass experiment it was that they’d been doing, but didn’t say a damn thing. He just watched them both like they were being featured on Animal Planet.

The woman eventually trotted over to him. “Thanks for the chat,” she said. “I’m Zoë Hange, but everyone calls me Hange because Zoë doesn’t really suit me.”

He didn’t think that was true at all; names were stupid anyway. Who the fuck cared what anyone called you? Did it change anything? No.

“Levi,” he said.

She held her hand out—her good one—for a few long seconds before he took it in his own and shook it.

“Nice meeting you, Levi. I’ve got to go and study for finals, which start next week.”

“You can’t change the world if you don’t pass your finals,” he said, deadpan.

She practically wriggled with delight at his stupid comment.

“And you can’t pass your finals if you don’t get some goddamn sleep, either,” he added.

“Yeah, and I’m _going_ to change the world after I pass some finals. Don’t forget it. You’ll hear about me doing something great in a few years, and you can say you met me in an emergency room’s waiting room.”

He wanted to say something normal, something maybe-encouraging, but what ended up coming out of his mouth was: “I’ll try to remember to turn on my TV.”

She grinned at him, pushed her glasses up her nose, and nodded. “I’ll take it,” she said.

And then she turned back to Moblit, grabbed her purse and her shitty physics book, and started for the door.

Farlan was at his elbow two seconds later, before she was even through the exit.

A scowling yet pitiful looking Isabel was with him.

“Who was that, Levi?” Farlan asked.

Levi slowly lifted his eyes to meet his friend’s.

 _She’ll change the world_ , he thought.

But he said, “Hell if I know.”

“Like hell you _don’t_ know,” Isabel pouted.

“Are you hiding a secret girlfriend from us?” Farlan sounded surprised.

Levi frowned and got to his feet.

“I think he is,” Isabel said, hitting Farlan’s arm. “I think he’s hiding a secret girlfriend from us.”

“I like you both better,” Levi said, pulling his car keys out of his pocket and starting for the door at a brisk pace that most tall people couldn’t keep up with, “when you’re tearing each other’s heads off.”


End file.
